Study of organizational culture in Georgian public schools, 2014

22 Jan 2014

By the order of Teacher Profession Development Center, ISSA conducted a research that aimed to study organization culture of Georgian public schools.

To study the issue the values and attitudes of school society were studied in the following direction:

• Professional development, both individual and school;
• Cooperation and communication;
• Modern Learning Practice;
• Caring for safety, which in itself considers physical, emotional and cognitive components;
• Gender issues in teachers' school practice;

The study was carried out by complex use of qualitative and quantitative methods.

Quantitative research was of a national sample, ie, in all 11 (11) regions of Georgia including Tbilisi.

The general population of quantitative research was: the board of trustees of the general education schools of Georgia, school administration, and teachers.

The research was carried out using the survey, in particular, face-to-face interview method.

The research tool was a standardized questionnaire that included closed, open and semi-quoted questions.

In order to develop a questionnaire, namely, to determine valid indicators focus groups were conducted. 2 focus groups were conducted in total. In the discussion participated education experts, specialists of organizational psychology, school teachers, education policy designers, etc.

Sampling: Multi-stage stratified selection will be used. The total size of selection was distributed to the regions so that the sample margin for each region was not more than 5%, with 95% reliability. The sampling model in relation to the whole country has provided 1.5% margin of assessment.

The results of the survey gave us the opportunity to generalize the data in the following areas: the city, the village, the mountainous village, the compactly populated areas of ethnic minorities, the small contingent schools.

Qualitative research was conducted using the focus groups.

The target groups of qualitative research were pupils and pupils' parents.

Qualitative research covered all regional units.

Totally 22 focus groups were held. There were two group discussions in each region: one with pupils and one with teachers.

A manual questionnaire (called "Guideline") was developed for group discussions. Guidelines of pupils and teachers were different but they had some overlap.

Members of 8-10 target groups participated in the discussions. Participants will be selected by different parameters:

• Pupils of a different class, age and gender are included in the focus group of pupils;
• Teachers of different subjects, age, and gender were included in the focus group of teachers;